The present invention generally relates to vending machines and, more particularly, is concerned with a product transfer assembly of modified zigzag shape for a vending machine.
Products, such as gumballs and plastic capsules or balls containing candy or other novelties inside, are well-known and universally popular with consumers. Typically these products are sold in bulk vendors commonly referred to as vending machines. These vending machines generally include a product reservoir, a coin-actuated dispensing mechanism and a product discharge structure all designed to cooperate in serially dispensing an item or items of the product from the reservoir down through the dispensing mechanism to an external discharge location via the product discharge structure.
Historically, these vending machines were typically designed only to display and dispense the product. Other than by being painted in bright colors, the typical vending machine was not designed to attract consumers by employing unconventional techniques, such as incorporating some unexpected action or movement of the items of the product during its dispensing from the machine where such movement was visible and had entertainment value to the consumer. Over recent years, however, consumers have increasingly wanted something more, such as to be entertained, after depositing a coin in a vending machine to initiate a dispensing cycle. So new approaches have been devised by vending machine designers to overcome this historical practice in order to draw more attention to vending machines to encourage their use.
Some representative examples in the prior art of vending machines that have adopted the approach of adding entertainment value to their machines are found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,077,254 to Goldfarb (this early machine might be viewed as an except to the above-described historical practice in that it did incorporate entertainment value in its dispensing structure), U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,822 to Haymond, U.S. Pat. No. 5,782,378 to Hart et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,115 to Halliburton, U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,117 to Kovens et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,022 to Mann, U.S. Pat. No. 6,056,151 to Peery et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 6,520,274 to Chang. Most of these vending machines, except for Chang, employ structures in the form of spiral, serpentine and zigzag shaped tracks down which the items of the products roll or slide due to gravity from an upper dispensing mechanism to a lower discharge location where the product can be removed by a consumer. While the structures of these prior art patents appear to be mostly satisfactory in use for the specific purpose for which they were designed, such as to provide an excitement aspect or entertainment value to product item travel along a discharge path, the configuration and arrangements of some of these structures would appear to occasionally allow product items to be thrown off their tracks and thus dislocated and not reach the lower discharge location where product items can be removed by consumers. Others do not seem likely to capture the attention of consumers sufficiently long enough to encourage them to make repeated use of the vending machine.
Consequently, a need still exists for an innovation which will provide a solution to the aforementioned problems in the art without introducing any new problems in place thereof.